Two Loafing Cats

On a concrete ledge outside one of the reinforced-concrete apartment blocks on Ikeshima, two cats sit in easy company. The tabby on the left has its eyes almost shut, settled and unhurried. Beside it, a black and white cat holds its attention on something further off. The ledge is marked with dirt and stains; behind them, a beige rendered wall meets a blue-grey wall at a corner, the render worn through in patches. The apartment blocks were built because the island had no room to spread. Ikeshima covers about 1.08 square kilometres, and at the population peak in 1970 around 7,770 people were living on it, housed in towers the company put up in concrete rather than the low timber rows common in mainland coal towns. The blocks came with communal bathhouses and shared laundries; a coal-fired power station and a seawater-desalination plant, both commissioned in 1967, kept the island self-sufficient because mains power and water could not be supplied in the ordinary way. The Ikeshima Coal Mine began commercial output in 1959, the last new colliery to open in Japan, and closed on 29 November 2001, the last large-scale underground coal mine in the country to do so. About 2,500 workers were dismissed at closure. Most residents left with them. By 2021, the island's recorded population was 111, mostly retired miners and their families. Much of the housing and the shopping street stands disused. The cats, free-roaming and at ease on the ledges and stairwells of the emptied blocks, are a recognised feature of the island now. This photograph was made in 2026.